Vimacs is based on the keymaps of GNU Emacs 21 and XEmacs, so if you are familiar with them, you'll feel right at home in Vimacs. For Emacs users, most (if not all) of the common key maps in Emacs are present in Vimacs, such as <C-Space>, <C-w> and <C-y> to mark, kill and yank regions, <C-x><C-f> to find a file, and <C-x>2 to vertically split a window. However, you can now take advantage of the incredible power of Vim's Normal and Command modes with a touch of the <Esc> key.

If you're a long-time Vim user, you retain vi's powerful moded editing paradigm while gaining all the benefits of Emacs' modeless editing. After a while, the <C-a> and <C-e> keys will become second nature to you, just as you're used to the h, j, k, and l keys for movement. Some of the keys familiar to you in Insert mode have been changed, but you won't take long to get used to Emacs's keys: just like Vim, Emacs's key layout has been designed so that commonly used keys are quick to access.

Grab the .tar.gz if you're using Unix, and the .zip file if you're using Windows (or any other platform, like MacOS).

Vimacs is a standard Vim plugin, so just put the vimacs.vim file in your plugin directory, and put vimacs.txt in your documentation directory. That's it! If you're using Unix, you should also read the INSTALL text file that comes with Vimacs for notes on how to run Vim with or without Vimacs.